Nature reviews policies after 'sloppy' stem cell paper retraction

Two controversial stem cell
papers that were found to be littered with errors have been
retracted by Nature, and the Japanese team behind them has
issued an apology.

Nature has announced it will now investigate its own
policies for checking for fraudulent work, "to ensure that the
money entrusted by governments is not squandered, and that
citizens' trust in science is not betrayed".

Haruko Obokata was at the centre of the debate over a paper
entitled "Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into
pluripotency", and an accompanying letter "Bidirectional
developmental potential in reprogrammed cells with acquired
pluripotency", both published on 30 January. In them, she and her
colleagues described a seemingly simple technique for converting
the adult blood cells of mice into pluripotent stem cells. This was
achieved by putting the cells under great strain using an acid bath
-- while they recovered from the stress, they turned into the
pluripotent cells so important to stem cell research going forward.
The system is referred to as stimulus-triggered acquisition of
pluripotency -- or STAP cells -- and stood to revolutionise stem
cell research. It even had the backing of paper collaborator
Teruhiko Wakayama, a highly respected cloning expert.

Shortly afterwards, allegations of errors arose. There were
suggestions that photos in the paper were in fact copies from old
experiments, written up in other papers, and that method
descriptions had been plagiarised. One group publicly claimed to
have trialled the same experiment, to no effect. The much sought
after STAP cells were not produced.

Obokata went on to make a public apology in which she blamed her inexperience, but stood
by the technique's worthiness. But the Riken Institute where she
worked launched a full investigation. It found that Obokata was
negligent in many cases, her work was sloppy and her senior
advisors had not checked her work sufficiently. "Sloppy data
management lead us to the conclusion that she sorely lacks, not
only a sense of research ethics, but also integrity and humility as
a scientific researcher," the Institute wrote.

However, two cases of misconduct were also pinpointed. In one
case images pertaining to be different cells and embryos were in
fact the same ones already represented, and in another STAP cells
were labelled incorrectly in the paper figures.

In its appraisal, the Riken Institute wrote: "This data was
extremely important in showing the pluripotency of the STAP cells,
and the actions taken by Dr Obokata completely undermine the
credibility of the data. There is no doubt that she was fully aware
of this danger, and we therefore conclude that this was an act of
research misconduct involving fabrication."

It continued: "In manipulating the image data of two different
gels and using data from two different experiments, Dr Obokata
acted in a manner that can by no means be permitted. This cannot be
explained solely by her immaturity as a researcher. Given the poor
quality of her laboratory notes it has become clearly evident that
it will be extremely difficult for anyone else to accurately trace
or understand her experiments, and this, too, is considered a
serious obstacle to healthy information exchange."

In their retraction and explanation, Obokata's team says the multiple errors "impair the credibility
of the study as a whole". As such, despite previous protestations
to the contrary, they admit, "we are unable to say without doubt
whether the STAP-SC phenomenon is real".

For its part, the Riken Institute promised to investigate the
reasons behind these series of errors, and why they were not caught
using the normal checks in place. Part of the problem has been
Obokata's poor record-keeping, which has led to the investigation
being a drawn out one. The Institute says it will re-examine "the
whole process of data management, including the management of
laboratory notebooks, as well as the process from research proposal
to collating results and presenting them in papers".

Nature, one of the most highly respected scientific
journals in the world, has responded to the retraction by issuing
an
editorial describing why the errors were not caught, and what
it plans to do going forward to tackle this problem.

"Our policies have always discouraged inappropriate
manipulation. However, our approach to policing it was never to do
more than to check a small proportion of accepted papers. We are
now reviewing our practices to increase such checking greatly, and
we will announce our policies when the review is completed."

When it comes to the errors, it blames "sloppiness", through
data handling and note-taking. "As a result, the conclusions of
such papers can seem misleadingly robust."

It maintains that partially because of that poor data
management, it would have been impossible for its own editors to
detect the errors, but that the whole affair has "further
highlighted flaws in Nature's procedures and in the
procedures of institutions that publish with us".

"We -- research funders, research practitioners, institutions
and journals -- need to put quality assurance and laboratory
professionalism ever higher on our agendas, to ensure that the
money entrusted by governments is not squandered, and that
citizens' trust in science is not betrayed."